Road Rage Before the Wilson Bridge

As I approached the Wilson Bridge today, I could see traffic was not moving very fast at all. So I used my usual approach of staying in the acceleration lane until the last minute and then merging in to the left. As I changed lanes to get into another barely moving lane, I suddenly heard this frenzy of horn-blowing. I looked over and some man about my age was shaking his middle finger at me. I guess he hadn’t liked my merge technique into the gridlock of the beltway.

My initial response was to think about shaking my finger back at him, but instead I just laughed at this ridiculous situation, where he was begrudging my getting 50 feet ahead of him. It just proves how tightly wound some people in the Washington Metropolitan area are. I’m glad I could just laugh at this old coot with Republican bumper stickers. Life’s too short to get so worked up over the traffic that plays itself out most every day.